10 September 2009

Federal Child Porn Sentencing Discussed

Law.com has an interesting report on a U.S. Sentencing Commission hearing on sentences for child porn possession. Some prominent judges felt that the sentences in the guidelines for these offenses were too high, and the commission saw addressing this as a high priority. Most glaring was the observation that child porn convictions carry long sentences (even for first time offenders in some cases) than repeat child rape. One observation was that something is wrong when a bank robber gets 10 months, and someone else gets 480 months for child porn possession that does not involve commercial distribution or production of child pornography.

An equally famous U.S. Attorney, who prosecuted Vice Presidential aide Scooter Libby (whose sentence was later commuted by President Bush), expressed concern at the divide between prosecutors and judges on what is appropriate in these cases. Thus, while expressing the view that high sentences were appropriate, he left open the possibility that more information could persaude him to support compromise.